Guest Post Guidelines

The experiment with guest posting has not been successful.

I’ve had to spend too much time back and forth with too many people who are unwilling or unable to meet the terms of the guidelines.

If you contact me about providing guest posts, please understand that I will not be replying or at the most the message will say that I am not accepting offers of guest posts.

Des Walsh
Author, Thinking Home Business blog

 

From the Archive – the guest post guidelines

Guest Post Guidelines

From time to time we receive offers to provide guest posts.  Most are for “advertorial” pieces, which are not accepted.

We are however open to having an agreement with a select group of guest bloggers who have a good public profile on the social web and can provide examples of their own work. 

If you would like to be considered as a guest blogger for Thinking Home Business, please get in touch using the Contact form: but please read these guidelines first.

Why you must have a substantial LinkedIn profile, with good connections, if you wish your proposal to be considered.

Please note. I receive many email offers of guest posts from gmail accounts and without any substantial information about the person behind the email. As most of these do not reply when I point to these guidelines, I can only assume the names/identities are not real. That’s why I now require a substantial LinkedIn profile, with a reasonable number of connections with other real people. It’s the only way I can be sure of having real people who have a live presence on the social web, writing for this blog. If it is not feasible for you to meet this condition, for whatever reason, I nevertheless wish you well in your search for opportunities for guest posting.

Introduction

The Thinking Home Business blog shares ideas, experience and tips for men and women professionals working from home and those who are thinking about doing so.

Founder-owner Des Walsh is a social media strategist, LinkedIn expert and business coach. He established his consulting and now coaching business from home over 20 years ago.

Des posts also at:

Until now (July 2012) almost all the posts on Thinking Home Business have been written by Des. Now we are looking at making room for some guest posts.

Hence this set of guidelines
.

Some history and statistics

Thinking Home Business was launched in August 2004

Currrent readership is approximately 50% US and Canada, 14% Australia, 10% Europe, with the rest mainly India, Indonesia and the Philippines .

Thinking Home Business Style

The aim has always been for the style of the blog to be:

  • informative
  • helpful
  • friendly
  • professional
  • positive
  • collegial
  • occasionally whimsical
  • definitely not pompous or arrogant
  • communicating a sense that we are all learners

Even though some self-styled blogging experts practice and promote a belligerent, provocative style and proclaim the “link-baiting”, rank-improving benefits of such a style, there is no place for that here.

Our Models of Good Practice

If you would like to know what kind of writing appeals to us, here are some of the positive, helpful, sharing bloggers we strive to emulate here:

The Guidelines

Thinking Home Business is committed to providing thoughtfully expressed, helpful information for professionals working from home and those who are contemplating doing so.

Providing guest posts for the site is a great way for you to reach new readers and earn valuable backlinks to your own site.

This site only carries posts from real people, who have a real presence on the social web, and use their own names: no pen names. An informative LinkedIn profile, with a substantial number of connectionts, is essential.

Repeating. No anonymous authors. No pen names. Real names only. And real life photographs – no cartoons.

We believe in growing the pie for all of us to benefit, so we want you to share your story and display your expertise.

In your contributions to this site you will typically do that elegantly and gracefully, and more by displaying your knowledge and understanding than by telling people how good you are.

  • Your post will be about working from home as a professional or related matters
  • Your post will be original, and not have been posted previously elsewhere
  • Just like Copyblogger, we expect posts on Thinking Home Business to be useful, relevant and well-written (for more on those qualities, check the Copyblogger guidelines for guest posts at this link
  • You agree to not post the same item elsewhere for a period of three months from when it appears on Thinking Home Business – and you agree that if you do re-post elsewhere you will include reference to the fact that the post appeared first on Thinking Home Business and insert a link back to the original post
  • Post length will typically be between 500-1000 words, with about 1,500 words as a guide to your upper limit (but quality is much more important than quantity)
  • If need be and at our sole discretion, we will make minor edits to your work and retain the right to alter the headline – but we expect you to provide a good headline in the first place
  • Images to complement the post’s text are welcome – any images submitted will be your own, or will be clearly in the public domain or for which you otherwise have the right to use for a commercial purpose, e.g. covered by a Creative Commons, commercial use, licence
  • By all means you may link back to relevant posts on your own site or other work of your own from elsewhere on the web – but no more than two such links per post
  • No affiliate links – any such links will be edited out
  • Posts which are really advertisements for your own services (“advertorial”) will not be accepted
  • Posts submitted will be published or not at the sole discretion of the site owner
  • Posts can be submitted in Open Office text, Microsoft Word or Google Docs
  • All posts will be submitted on the clear understanding that neither the site owner nor his company will not be liable, now or at any time in the future, for any financial payment for those posts, or for any other financial consideration in respect of income generated by or through the site
  • It is expected that you will reply promptly to any comments on your posts
  • For new guest bloggers, it will be expected that you spend about 10 minutes on providing in advance, a headline and the basic story for a post, rather than completing and submitting a whole post which may or may not be accepted (this is mainly in your interest, to save you spending time and effort unproductively)
  • Posts that don’t align with these guidelines and the established style of the site will not be published and we will invite you to resubmit or publish elsewhere.
  • Please provide a professional image of yourself and text (maximum 50 words) for your author “bio box” to appear at the end of each of your posts – the author box will contain no more than two links to your own site or information about you (for example a link to your LinkedIn or other online profile)
  • NB: It is essential that you provide information to establish your professional credentials and writing skill – a LinkedIn profile link, an About page link from your site, or other more extended bio, together with links to examples of your writing or blogging, will help in having your offer of guest posting considered

Des Walsh
Social Media Strategist, LinkedIn Specialist, Business Coach
Founder-owner, Thinking Home Business
All my links on the social web at Xeeme